The Silly Hobbit

The Silly Hobbit



My eyes fluttered open. I immediately noticed the presence of midday sunlight filling the square, normally dark room. I felt a tug on the tangled mess of the thin white quilt. Annoyed, I turned on my right arm towards the door. A tan, curly head of hair was level with the top of the mattress. A chubby hand reached for a clump of blanket, then another joined the effort to pull itself up. With a grunt, my cousin hoisted himself onto the bed, panting and huffing. He heaved himself to a sitting position, making a bench of my legs and causing me to let out a quick gasp.

“Whatchoo doin’, Anna, whatchoo doin’?” He cocked his head like a puppy, black eyes boring innocently into mine.

“Collin, my name isn’t Anna,” I mumbled.

He sighed impatiently, and scrambled over me to retrieve my Skull Candy headphones on the bedside table. Furrowing his eyebrows and scrunching up his face in concentration, the two-year-old boy attempted to fit them onto his head. He stuck his lip out and moaned when he realized that he needed my help. I reached over and put them over his ears, then turned on his favorite song. “Banana Phone”, the most obnoxious song on earth, flooded the room. I rubbed my eyes as a gargantuan smile spread across his face –the smile that made Miley Cyrus look depressed. Dang, that got me.

“Ooh!” He squealed, and then jumped up, squashing me in the process. He leapt off the bed, thumping out of my room with his little feet banging on the floor as he rushed into the hallway. I decided to pull myself out of bed and follow him. At the end of the wood-floored hallway he was attempting to get down the stairs without help. Anticipating catastrophe, I ran over to him and grabbed the collar of his orange polo shirt before he could plummet down the steeply twisting staircase. 

“Hey Collin, hold onto the wall!”

“I know, I know!” he whined, pushing me out of his way and stomping down the stairs, completely unaware that I was still secretly holding onto the back of his shirt.

I followed him out of the squeaky screen door to the backyard. With a crinkly frown, he thrust my iPod onto the grass and ran towards what I mistakenly thought would be the swings.

“Sandbox!” He grinned and pointed to the neighbors’ yard. Waddling in the direction of the sandbox, he suddenly broke into a run, his arms flinging excitedly around. Horrified, I watched him dive headfirst to the ground and do a somersault.

He spun around to see what my reaction was. With twigs stuck all over his hair and clothes, he was giving me that killer grin once again.

“Collin! Time to come eat lunch!” called my aunt, leaning out the open door. The smile on Collin’s face fell from into a frown. He pursed his lips in frustration.

“C’mon, let’s go inside.” My aunt strode towards us. I grabbed his hand, giving him over to her. A single tear rolled down his rosy cheek, and he looked at me like he had just been punished. He burrowed his head into the folds of her skirt and mumbled, “No… no… no…”

“Bye Silly Hobbit,” I said to him with a small smile. My cousin sniffed and popped his head up, his dark eyes watery.

“Bye-bye, Silly Hobbit,” he echoed back with a widening smile. That oh-so-contagious smile stuck in my mind as he trudged away from me, going back into the house to spread it elsewhere.